Johns Hopkins' dropout study causes stir

It was heartbreaking to hear Judy Codding talk about her experiences talking to students who had dropped out of school.

She said one particular student was bright, but left after his freshman year because he was bored and didn't think any of the adults in his school cared about him.

"I was struck by the waste and deception," said Codding, who is president and CEO of an educational think tank. "It was the waste of his talent and the deception that he had a prosperous future."

Dropout rates are a touchy subject in the educational world.

They're tough to calculate accurately, and they represent failure by both the student and the district.

So it was not surprising when educators across the country went bonkers when Johns Hopkins University released results of a study that branded 1,700 high schools as "dropout factories" because at least 60 percent of its students did not graduate.

All four comprehensive Grand Rapids high schools made the list, as well as Kelloggsville High.

The university compiled the numbers by subtracting the number of seniors from the number of freshmen from four years prior.

That unleashed a torrent of criticism from school administrators, who said the formula does not account for students who might leave by the start of their senior year -- but who are not dropping out.

That would mostly be alternative education students -- there were about 1,200 of them in Grand Rapids in the year used in the study. Plus, a fair number of students transfer to other districts, especially in an economically challenged state such as Michigan.

But the folks at Johns Hopkins said they were somewhat taken aback but the reaction. They have been issuing similar reports for four years and had not experienced the vitriol that came this week.

Mary Maushard, communications director for the university's Center for Social Organization of Schools, said her office received so many calls from educators that by Tuesday afternoon callers were greeted by a message directing them to a link on her Web site explaining how the study was conducted.

She said university staff members were surprised by the attention the report received from media types as well. My hunch was the label "dropout factory."

"It's certainly dramatic," she said. "But we've been using that term for four years. And researcher Bob Balfanz used it when he spoke at a civil rights program at Harvard last year and it attracted only a little media attention."

And while lots of educators grumbled about the study and its methodology, Maushard said she knows of only one superintendent who implied the university might have hidden motive.

And that would be Grand Rapids' Bernard Taylor.

At a news conference Tuesday, Taylor made reference to the Talent Development High School Model, a school reform package that comes from the university and is offered to district facing problems with student attendance, discipline, achievement scores and, yes, dropout rates.

"Maybe this is a way to call attention to its proprietary product," Taylor said.

"I have to confess that we all had a chuckle over that one," Maushard said. "Clearly, that is not the case."